Project Description

Interview with
METAMYTHER

Interviewer – Ro Llauro

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Metamyther – Photo: Randy Scott Slavin

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“I’d like to get people to think differently about music. I’m most interested in analyzing what happens when we alter aspects of form that we assume are fixed and immutable.”

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Metamyther – Photo: Randy Scott Slavin

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You’ve been involved in music for over 30 years now as well as being classically trained. Where did it all start?
Music has been a constant my whole life. I began playing piano when I was five years old and studied classical music until I went to college. My dad had a dedicated music room in the house that housed the piano, an entire wall of classical music CDs, and a stereo system where he could blast classical music. Classical music has a lot more dynamic range than pop music, where quiet sections are much quieter than louder parts, so you might need to ride the volume knob to hear the softer parts. Sometimes my dad would rock out to the quiet parts and the loud parts would then come in super loud, and my mom would yell at him to turn it down. I always thought that was funny.
At around the same time I started playing piano, my family bought a Nintendo system. For many kids in the 80s, video games were our first exposure to electronic music, and it was the same with me. Though I didn’t realize it then, I was being exposed to a musical paradigm dictated by timbre as opposed to the heavy technicality found in classical music. This started my love affair with electronic music. From there it was a short jump to making music on my own.

What’s changed throughout the years?
Before I set out to make Triumvirs, I had to come to grips with the fact that I hadn’t made music for fifteen years. The musical world had completely changed when I returned to it from a capability standpoint. I used to work with this software called Modplug that was ancient even back then. It didn’t even have a piano roll, just lines where you would write in note values and volumes. It limited you to one note per channel. Fast forward to Ableton, Youtube tutorials, and plugins that model expensive vintage studio equipment. Even though my core compositional abilities had thankfully somehow not gone away, production was a new ballgame, and it took time adjusting to this environment.
Creativity at its core is the same, no matter the medium. It’s all about having the insight to identify a compelling idea and the discipline to see it through. That’s where the hard work lies. When I find something that grabs me, I’ll throw myself into it, just utter immersion. It’s like I don’t think about anything else.

Do you think you’ve finally found your voice through Metamyther?
Definitely. It feels like a logical progression of my personal and creative development. I knew innately what I wanted the project to look and feel like. I grew up near a dilapidated asbestos factory where I shot my first short film, so I’ve always been attracted to abandoned sites, apocalyptic scenes where humanity is absent and only its crumbling architecture remains, slowly being reclaimed by nature. That imagery is about impermanence and everything’s inevitable life cycle. It suggests an alternative version of beauty where decay is visually appealing. This aligns closely with the aesthetics of industrial music and science fiction, of which I’m a fan. It made sense to situate the project within this world. I aim to write music that’s confrontational, intense, and cinematic.

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What does Metamyther mean? Where did the name come from?
It’s not such a straightforward answer!
At the time I was getting into the work of Joseph Campbell. He discusses shared mythologies common across ancient cultures, even though they may be disconnected by geography or time. He suggests there are aspects about our experience that are intrinsically linked. This idea of an overarching narrative to the human experiment deeply fascinated me.
Today the word “myth” contains both positive and negative connotations, so I was drawn to the dual nature of the term in addition to Campbell’s teachings. I started thinking about which myths persist today, how they function, and how technology reconfigures them.
We experience contemporary culture through a metafictional lens, a hyperawareness of a media object and how it works on us. The work itself might offer us a commentary on its very structure. To me, Metamyther is a process or entity affecting the very myths we take as foregone assumptions, pointing them out in order to change them. It’s my way of pushing against the profound examples of intellectual, political, and cultural bankruptcy that drag us down as a society.

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Triumvirs seems to be somewhat of a concept album. What’s the meaning behind the three tracks and the movements?
The Metamyther ethos almost demanded executing something different than a pop structure format of verses and choruses. The idea of copying and pasting large chunks of a song was not attractive. This was a way for me to break out of the expected, though ingrained, structural myth most of us assume is a given in our listening experience. In a small way, this aspect of popular music becomes its own system of control, a musical politics. I settled on a three-act structure informed by narrative structure (again echoing Joseph Campbell) as well as pre-existing classical music forms like the sonata or the concerto that by definition contain multiple movements. These breaks allow for contrast and movement in the music.
What I discovered is that creating these movements takes the listener on a journey that’s similar to classic narrative structure where a protagonist changes throughout the story. As a result, we change too. I like the idea of starting a track in one place and for that to morph into something completely different.
Avoiding stale tropes like love/breakup songs, or songs about money or self-aggrandizement, was also crucial. The tracks on Triumvirs are instrumental, so the meanings themselves lend themselves to abstraction. The timbres dictated the track titles. “Blood Brain Barrier,” for example, sonically tells the journey of a foreign entity traveling to the brain. This could be medicine or a narcotic or even a new idea. “Ashes Underfoot” is more of a soundtrack to an imaginary science fiction story, again reflecting my interest with abandoned sites. “Blast Radius” is a story of self-empowerment, the first track I wrote for the album. In times of high stress, as long as we remain outside the blast radius, we’ll be fine. The song pulls you through an emotional journey of complete despair, conflict, and finally to success on the other end.
The three movements in the three tracks form a symmetry, emphasized even more by the name Triumvirs. Each movement has a name, which allows for some steering of the abstract narrative and an additional opportunity for expression. I plan to play with this format in the future. For example, I’m now working on a track where each movement is a line in a haiku.

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Metamyther – Photo: Randy Scott Slavin

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What was the creative process like?
You might think forcing myself to work inside this three-act story is confining, but I find it the exact opposite. It’s super interesting to see what kind of stuff comes out of it. Especially in electronic music, where every possibility is at your fingertips, constraints help rein yourself in.
That said, no one said it was easy! I had to sort of invent this grammar as I worked because there weren’t many precursors. It’s pretty easy to generate a single idea for a song, and a bit more difficult to expand that idea. It’s the hardest to even develop that idea into a third section, and often this would be what in narrative is called “the dark night of the soul” where all seems lost for the protagonist, but they find a way to push through and persevere.
Songs change noticeably at the “pivot points” at the end of the first and second acts, signalling a new movement. Maybe that’s a key or tempo change or introducing a new set of instruments. This would often be where I would get stuck, but in solving the track, it would ultimately reach its full potential, which was extremely rewarding. Looking forward, I only want to build on this. Triumvirs was great to start to grapple with the form, and the follow-up, Tetractys, is going to be even tighter from a songwriting standpoint.

You’re not new to Digital Music Distribution. Your first albums and tracks were on mp3.com before the Napster Era. Who was the tortured hybrid?
Wow, you’ve really done your research! It’s true, that project seems like a lifetime ago. I wonder if that page is even still up. I’ve had a few monikers over the years, and Hybridate (or Hybrid8) was the first one. Originally I wanted just Hybrid but another band had taken the name. I released my first record and sold it around my high school. Today, I’d probably find it cringeworthy since there were so many angsty teen lyrics. I wrote the whole thing on this archaic Midi software and “mixed” it with the barest of skills. “The tortured hybrid” was an inside joke among my friends to describe the emo character that came through in the music.

You’ve also followed this release with a set of live performances. What’s your audience like? What was their response? Who did you play with?
My EP release party at Muchmore’s in Brooklyn was such a blast. So many people came out for it, some I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was so great to perform for everyone, and get reactions from people after the fact. Some were really affected, and thought the music was even better in a live setting. Others said they had fun pointing out when the movements changed. I was on a natural high the whole next day.
I approached two artists I knew to play on the bill with me. A laptop duo consisting of Jesse Simpson and Greg Halleran kicked off the show. I’d met Jesse through a completely random set of circumstances. A friend and I were vacationing in Mexico City and stopped into a bar one night. This guy sat next to us and started talking to us out of the blue. When he found out we were from New York, he suggested I connect with Jesse, who was studying a technology based art and design program. He’s also into modular synths, but had more of a traditional set with Greg that night that reminded me of the best old school IDM, just all these microtonal sounds that kept evolving. I was super into it.
Xuan Rong was the other act I approached. I had met her through this place 343 Labs in New York. Her music is confrontational and antagonistic. No one sounds like her, and she’s played live all over town, so both aspects of her practice are really honed. During her performance my girlfriend said she was like her new spirit animal. Such a moving, emotive performance. I’d love to play with both artists again in the future.
I have sights set on several other events and venues around the city. From there I hope to play live in cities where I know people, like Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and expand from there. Maybe Australia should be next! I visited for several weeks a few years ago and would love a chance to return.

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Metamyther – Photo By Randy Scott Slavin

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How do you set up for playing live?
Having some sense of an actual live performance, as opposed to hitting play on a bunch of tracks, was very important. Given my piano background and how I write songs, having a keyboard onstage to play sections, and leaving some parts open for improvisation, made sense. Still, there were a fair number of sections where I wouldn’t have anything to do from this perspective. These were parts where I mapped a bunch of effects, allowing me to process the sound live in any number of ways. So I could trigger a beat repeat or a chorus or a distortion effect based on what I felt like.

Any chance we might get to see your next performance online through live streaming?
Yes, definitely. I’m currently looking into the best platforms and venues to stream with. Even for in-person live performances, I’m putting effort into documenting my performances, which includes audio, video, and sometimes photos.

Where is Metamyther going next?
Right now I’m most of the way through writing the second EP, Tetractys. Some of the songs are already mixed, in fact. Tetractys is also based on a tripartite theme, taking its name from the triangular figure with points arranged in four rows. This mimics the album format, which will have four tracks, each with three movements, iterating one more from Triumvirs. It’ll be released sometime in 2020. From there I’ll be working on the third EP, completing the trilogy. That album will contain five tracks, again iterating on Tetractys. I already have an idea of what the final track for that album might be.
I just finished remixing a track called “War Cry” for Bella Saona. It’s been a different kind of compositional challenge to work with vocal stems but I’m super excited for when the track premieres.

You just streamed a Serum Masterclass for 343 Labs. What are they all about?
343 Labs, where I met Xuan Rong, is an electronic music and production school based in New York City. It’s not an exaggeration to say that 343 has been pivotal to my musical development. Making music is often a solitary activity, so it’s important to know that there are others in the same boat who are willing to help your music.  I wanted to do what I could to help the school out, so I approached the owner and asked about doing a Serum class, a big topic they hadn’t yet tackled.

Any advice you’d like to give to producers today?
Yeah, actually! Make music that sounds like you. There are literally thousands of tracks that are just genre exercises, and that’s totally fine. I listen to that stuff. But far more unique, and maybe more scary, is to release music that carries your unique stamp. Music that no one else could make. This is harder, but ultimately it’ll be more compelling. “Genre” and “generic” are part of the same root. Toss out genre barriers. Just don’t even worry about them! Pursue the literary fiction equivalent of music and people will respond. The world needs your music.

Anything I missed that you’d like to add?
If you enjoy the music, let me know! I’m active on all channels, so please get in touch.

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Metamyther – Photo: Randy Scott Slavin

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Metamyther – Photo: Randy Scott Slavin

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AMNPLIFY – DB